Minutes earlier, Baumgarten had finished rebuilding the engine in his race car.

Advertisement

He had closed his garage, walked into his Mount Clemens home, cleaned up and gotten ready for bed.

Then a question began to tug at him: Did I torque all of the connecting rod bolts?

Perhaps he had. Perhaps he hadn’t.

What if he had missed one?

The engine, and the answer, would be in the garage in the morning, but Baumgarten could not wait.

He sprang out of bed and got dressed. He flipped lights on.

He went back to the garage.

He removed the oil pan from the engine.

Every bolt had been torqued.

“That tells you,” Larry Lamay said, “about his dedication to the sport. Sometimes a little bit can tell you an awful lot about a person.

“He was a very nice guy, yet he took his racing very serious. He was pretty damn serious about what he did.”

A husband, father and grandfather, and a friend of many who happened into his life, Baumgarten also was one successful race car driver.

Winner of multiple season championships, at Mount Clemens Race Track, Motor City Speedway and Dixie Motor Speedway, Baumgarten, who died in 1988, gets his racing due in November when he’ll be inducted into the Michigan Motorsports Hall of Fame.

“I’m glad this deal has come about,” Lamay said.

Lamay knew Baumgarten in a variety ways.

A former Mount Clemens racer himself, Lamay worked for one of Baumgarten’s bigger on-track rivals, Ray Nece, and he raced against Baumgarten.

Lamay, who later worked on Baumgarten’s race team, was a co-worker of Baumgarten at Ford Motor Company, and he became part of Erv and Joyce Baumgarten’s family when he married their daughter Denise.

“When we were on the race track, we were competitors,” Lamay, who now works for a company that supplies drive line parts to NASCAR teams, said. “When we were at work, we were fellow workers. When we were out with the family, I was his son-in-law.

“He always did a good job of deciphering all that, keeping it all separate. He was able to draw that line. He was a lot more than just a friend.”

Baumgarten was born in Columbus Township in 1927.

A U.S. Army veteran, Baumgarten began driving race cars in 1954 in Mount Clemens.

In 1958, he won an “old model” season championship at Motor City Speedway and won the mod 6 title at Dixie the following year.

With the 1960s came Baumgarten’s string of success at MCRT.

Recognizable for his blue and white No. 108 car, Baumgarten won 34 feature races at the track from 1961 to 1972, according to Clinton Township resident John Nece, the son of Ray Nece and a former Mount Clemens racer who championed Baumgarten’s election to the hall of fame.

In 1971, John Nece said, Baumgarten achieved one of his “biggest late model super stock wins” when he won the Mount Clemens 200 against a field that featured seven current MMHOF members, including Ray Nece, Bob Senneker and Art Sommers.

“He was equally talented on both types of racing surfaces, but preferred dirt to asphalt,” John Nece said.

“He drove many types of race cars, including … old model stocks and late model super stocks along with hard tops, mod 6s, sprints and super modifieds.

Added Lamay, “He had a pretty good notebook. He tried a lot of different styles of racing.”

Terry Bogusz, who raced at Mount Clemens and now watches his son Terry compete at Flat Rock Speedway, used words like “tenacity” and “longevity” to summarize Baumgarten’s career.

“He was a smart driver,” Bogusz said.

Lamay called Baumgarten “smooth,” and said he was a man of integrity and character.

“He was very calculating and smooth,” Lamay said. “He used a lot of finesse.

“He didn’t make very many mistakes. I don’t recall him ever tearing his car up.

“If something was right in his mind, it was right. If it was wrong, it was wrong. He wouldn’t be moved.”

Baumgarten retired from racing in 1975, ending a career during which he drove at more than 20 tracks, including Flat Rock, Toledo, Owosso, Auto City and Eldora.

He stayed close to the sport watching Lamay and Dave DeSmith, who married the Baumgartens’ other daughter, Debby, compete at MCRT.